Go, Levi. You did good.
I waited until they were hidden in the shadows, then entered the tent through the slit. Disgusting blankets lay in piles. A bucket sat in the corner. The reek was worse than some camp latrines, and I held my breath as I kicked out.
The bucket tipped, splashing the canvas and darkening the material. The center pole groaned as it wobbled, giving in to gravity with the cut in the canvas weakening the stability. The effort to collapse the tent was hardly worth it because the guard charged in like an enraged bull, dragging blankets and tent ropes behind him as we collided.
I let out an exaggerated oof! Warned myself against overacting as I fell to the ground. I was the gods-damned Alpha of Sentinel Falls. A dreaded Dread Lord here to rescue hostages. No one would believe a sleepy guard and a substandard tent were enough to drive me to my knees.
I charged from the tent, battling the guard while distant men shouted obscenities. More of Amal’s conscripts rushed out of hiding. Chaos erupted. The fire flared. Burning wood spiraled when someone charged through the campfire, kicking backward. Pike fell and then rolled to his feet. Despite my orders, the Cariboo wolf was giving the good fight until Mace stormed out and dragged him back.
I made a show of struggling upright. Got in a few hard blows before a dozen men converged and I was down on the snowy ground, forced to my knees. I counted the blows to my back, legs, kidneys.
“Don’t kill him,” a female said. “She likes them alive.”
I forced swollen eyelids open. Studied the girl in front of me. Long dark hair with a gleaming silver streak. “Should I stick to the lie and call you Brin?”
Her smile thinned. Nothing registered in her eyes, as if she was empty. “Make sure it’s him.”
I gritted my teeth as someone cut the wool tunic from my arm. I hadn’t bothered with the leather protection. What was happening was my decision, another turn of fate’s wheel.
A wolf grunted, “The tattoo is here.”
“Cut it,” Brin ordered. “I want to hear him scream.”
It took twenty—twenty slow, slicing pulls from a serrated blade, sawing into my shoulder, my back, through muscles, nerves, across the wolf tattoo, the mark of the Alpha, before agony won and I gave her what she wanted.
PART FOUR: THE MADNESS
CHAPTER 34
Noa
“It was right… here,” Levi said, scuffing his foot close to the crimson-stained snow. “They dragged him to his knees. Beat him while he fought. Gray got in some good hits like he meant it. Then she showed her face. Wanted to be sure it was him. Told them to cut…”
Levi tightened his voice, controlling the wobble. “Mace said Gray wanted to be taken. Planned it. So we had to stand and watch.”
Listen to him scream. Words Levi refused to say, but I’d heard the details from Pond earlier. The boy had been too upset not to blurt it out, his expression stark with his eyes wide.
My hands fisted in the pockets of my woolen tunic. Closing around Amal’s rune stone.
Levi turned his head and gestured. “We were hiding in those trees. The girls were hugging each other, crying, and Mace had his hands on our shoulders—Pond and me—sending fucking orders through the pack bond. Then that Pike guy came and they dragged us away, kept moving until we found the others. Sent us back to camp.”
Hours had passed since then and now. Time was precious. I stared at the blood frozen in the churned-up snow and mud. “You’re sure it was Brin?”
“I’m sure.” Levi wiped at his nose. The wind was cruel and cutting, whipping my hair across my face; the cruelty was nothing compared to what my mate had endured… for me. To lead me into the heart of Amal’s fortress, Mace had said. Some fucking thing about a straight line being…
My fingers ached, as if I was squeezing the life out of the rune stone.
“I’m going to kill her,” Levi said. “End Brin-the-fake.”
If I didn’t do it first. “She can syphon. Use energy as a weapon.”
“I can rip her throat out.” He’d grown up too fast. The reckless boy they called the Pied Piper was gone. I mourned the years he’d lost, when Levi might have laughed, lived like every other teenage boy coming of age. And Laura—I mourned for her, too, hiding in Anson’s archive. So many debts, building up. Debts Amal owed. Debts I’d collect before we reached the end.
Men shouted from across the clearing. Pike had opened the passage Brin used, held back the magic while the first team moved through—Cariboo fighters, some from Carmag. But Sentinel Falls wolves dominated. Their Alpha had been taken. There’d be no mercy for the enemy, or those who stood in the way.
“We’re not going,” Angel said as Mace approached.
His canines flashed. “You don’t give orders here.”
